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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9670982" data-attributes="member: 6790260">If one's personal perception of what feels plausible or realistic is what is doing the deciding, I don't understand how that differs from what I said. It just means GM Q tries to direct their feelings at properties X and Y, rather than properties A and B. And, I'll note, plenty of people have already admitted that doing what feels right or what feels like it will contribute to a more exciting experience is still a thing, even for the most rigorously sandbox-y GM who prioritizes other things first.It even seemed at least reasonably non-controversial, by this thread's standards, when I asserted that what I think most people actually DO is an exchange rate between various priorities. That is, if we say 1 "point" of interestingness is only worth 0.01 "points" of plausibility, then something needs to be worth 100+ interestingness points in order to be a fair exchange for even a single point of plausibility lost in the doing. Such a standard doesn't mean this GM would never choose interestingness despite a loss of plausibility, but rather that they expect a very high return for the investment, so to speak. If the GM knows that option A would be profoundly, overwhelmingly boring and dull, but very slightly more plausible than option B, which would be profoundly exciting and engaging and still very plausible, it seems...rather unlikely that even an extremely strident sandbox-y GM would choose the former option. Now, if it were the difference between a merely mildly uninteresting but overwhelmingly plausible option C vs a merely mildly or only temporarily interesting/exciting/etc. but wildly implausible option D, naturally that GM and indeed most GMs would choose the former, as it is clearly the lesser of two evils. "Maximally plausible but profoundly boring" loses to "Almost maximally plausible but profoundly exciting", even in cases where "maximally plausible and slightly uninteresting" wins out over "almost completely implausible and somewhat interesting".Let me give a concrete example of what I mean. Let's say the PCs were framed for a crime (or possibly committed one, whichever you prefer). The plausible, but extremely boring, option A would be for them to wait for days or weeks in a jail they don't have the ability to break out of, until a judge finally arrives to hear their case. The slightly less plausible, but still fairly plausible, option B would be for the PCs' allies (who also oppose the tyrannical/oppressive laws of the land) to stage a prison breakout before that happens, both to help the PCs escape, and to have a little leverage over them ("we did break you out of jail...you could at least scratch our backs in return" kind of thing). A prison break specifically to help the PCs is simply, flatly, less plausible than the prison working as it has always worked. But it's also a hell of a lot more fun--and, importantly, still quite plausible, even if it is ever-so-slightly less plausible than the alternative.If there is a GM here who would choose to make the players play through hours of "you can't escape from the jail cell, it was literally made to hold people like you, you just have to wait until the trial begins", rather than having a plausible-but-not-AS-plausible exciting prison-break sequence, I will gladly retract the criticism. But I'm fairly confident there isn't anyone here who would choose the maximally-plausible but terribly-boring option when a highly, but not maximally, plausible option exists that would be way more fun to play.</blockquote>

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